Madelyn Grace

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Sep, 2020

Stories (6)

6 Stories

132 karma pts

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“The Twelve Christmases” by Madelyn Grace

Submitted to Contest #229

Nana’s dropped the applesauce. “Oops!” She laughs, tipping in her seat ever so slightly, one meaty hand pressed to her even meatier bosom. “Oh, my old girl hands. Oh, the applesauce!” Iris continues to stare at her untouched plate of food, growing ever colder as time passes. She doesn’t move as her mother brings over the dustpan and brush, a roll of paper towel under one gold-bangled arm and a tense smile beneat...

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“Meredith Gris is Just Fine” by Madelyn Grace

Submitted to Contest #197

Meredith Gris is born at midnight, beneath a gleaming supermoon. She isn’t breathing. Nobody is prepared for it. Her mother screams to hold her, her hands outstretched, her face flooded with angry tears and exhausted sweat; the midwives rush from one side of the room to the other, murmuring beneath their breaths, ignoring the shrieks. The doctor, hands soaked with blood, doesn’t say a word as she grabs Meredith’s chin, barely gentle, and forces her jaw wide open. For a moment, she just stares, the lines of her forehead creasing her skin ...

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“This Week on: Anne and Ollie” by Madelyn Grace

Submitted to Contest #195

“What’d you get up to on the weekend?” Melissa pauses, hand halfway outstretched to her coffee. Her glasses slip a millimetre down her face as she looks slowly across the staff room, searching for the man who had spoken. This conversation is hardly her business. He’s not talking to her. He probably doesn’t even realise she’s there. But he’s got her attention. “Nothing, really.” Ah, there she is. The woman he’s speaking to. Melissa can’t see her from this awkward angle, but she doesn’t need to—he only ever speaks to her. Every day...

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“Lessons in Forgiveness” by Madelyn Grace

Submitted to Contest #144

For Evelyn Brass, home is the smell of antiseptic, cold, stale air, and stiff clothes. Home is a sickly white bed with a paper-thin mattress, and a television on which she can never quite focus. Pale blue curtains spotted with bleach in the corners. An entourage of bent cards propped up against smudged glass vases, holding flowers that are just staring to peek on the wrong side of rotten. Evelyn Brass considers this to be her home because she does not remember having anything else to fill the definition. She thinks that, in the smog that c...

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“Nothing Else Needs to be Said” by Madelyn Grace

Submitted to Contest #62

How many times must we fall for this trap before we learn our persistent lesson? We are born into prophecies and destinies, swaddled in the arms of the future before we can even lift our newborn heads. Some of us are lucky; some of us are told we will be heroes, the names inscribed on the bases of marble sculptures, our faces forever etched into stone for all to worship and thank. But the lucky ones are fair and few in numbers, and the rest of us are left behind. Those of us infected by misfortune have our destinies thrust at us with u...

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“Noah and Niamh, Niamh and Noah” by Madelyn Grace

Submitted to Contest #60

Walking earth’s beaten ground had once felt ethereal to Noah; she had loved the feeling of the sun on her neck as she wandered, often barefoot, through her town and around and around. Her neighbours would wave or stop her at the side of the footpath for a small chat, which she would enjoy thoroughly, and then send her back off on her merry way, wherever she was venturing this time. Nowadays, it felt like hell had risen and boiled over the surface of the planet. If Noah walked barefoot, she would certainly pierce her skin on shattered gla...

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